A First in Humanities vs STEM: The Extreme Disparity in Grade Deflation

The 90% Illusion

You are studying English Literature. You wrote what you consider to be a masterpiece essay on Victorian poetry. You spent three weeks on it. You get a 74%. Your professor tells you it is one of the best essays they have read this year.

Your flatmate is studying Mathematics. They took a 2-hour exam on differential equations. They get their paper back with a 96%.

You feel intellectually inferior. How did they get a 96% while you peaked at a 74%? Is STEM just inherently easier to score high in? Or is the UK grading system fundamentally broken?

The Ceiling of Subjectivity

The disparity stems from the nature of the assessments.

The STEM Absolute: In Mathematics, Physics, or Computer Science, an answer is either objectively true or objectively false. If a maths exam has 100 questions, and you use the correct formula to solve all 100, the professor is legally obligated to give you 100%.

The Humanities Deflation: In English, History, or Philosophy, there is no "correct" answer. You are graded on the strength of your argument, the elegance of your prose, and the depth of your research. Because perfection in art and literature is impossible, humanities professors operate with an unofficial psychological ceiling.

A 70% is excellent.

A 75% is publishable academic quality.

An 80% is considered the absolute maximum a human undergraduate could possibly achieve.

A humanities professor will simply refuse to give an essay a 95%, because that implies the essay is perfect and cannot be improved, which violates the core philosophy of the humanities.

How This Damages Humanities Students

This extreme grade deflation in the humanities has real-world consequences.

1. The Master's Funding Gap When applying for highly competitive postgraduate funding (like the AHRC scholarships), students are ranked by their academic transcripts. If a funding council is comparing a Physics student with an 88% WAM to a History student with a 72% WAM, the board must consciously adjust their expectations to understand that the 72% in History is actually statistically equivalent to the 88% in Physics. If the board fails to do this, STEM students dominate the funding.

2. The US GPA Conversion Crisis If a UK student applies to an American Ivy League grad school, the American admissions team looks at the UK transcript. They see the English Literature student got a 72%. In the American system, a 72% is a C- (a terrible grade). The UK student has to desperately explain that in the UK Humanities system, a 72% is actually an A (a First).

The Strategy: If you are a humanities student, you must permanently delete the concept of "100%" from your brain. Your maximum possible score is an 80%. If you score a 72%, you are elite. Do not compare your percentages with your STEM flatmates; you are playing two entirely different mathematical games.